Read the Label

I’ve always been a ‘foodie’, even before I actually learned to cook. I’d read all the books and watch all the TV programs - 'Ready Steady Can't Cook' or whatever they were called. But even though I read those books with much enthusiasm, for a long time my culinary skills only really stretched as far as opening a jar of pasta sauce. Then one day I was presented with a new book; Nigel Slater’s Real Food and that all changed.

Waiting patiently in line at my local village store, I perused a display of ‘convenience’ packets. Simply out of boredom or possibly for some nostalgic trip back to my Dolmio Days, I selected one from the shelf:

Colmans Casserole Mix Chilli Con Carne 50g
Cook with mince, onions, kidney beans and tomatoes.

So if I’ve got that right then, the packet basically contains chilli powder and some herbs and spices? Where’s the convenience in that? Why, if I am going to the trouble of purchasing beef, onions, kidney beans and tomatoes, would I not just pick up a fresh chilli for a few pence or chilli powder still for probably less money than the packet with stacks left over for other recipes?

Surely there must be more; I inspected the packet a little closer:

A unique blend of chillies and spices to create a tasty Mexican style meal.

Contains traces of egg, Cornflour, Tomato Powder, Onion Powder, Salt, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Spices (2%), Yeast Extract, Wheat Flour, Flavourings, Oregano, Chillies (0.9%), Vegetable Oil, Spice Extract

Egg? Yeast extract? Unspecified Spices (2%), sugar, wheat flour and unspecified ‘flavourings’? Yep, I’d say that was pretty flipping unique!

I’m not going to rant about the contents of food and food labeling (although the mind boggles at the inclusion of egg in a chilli – but I’ve never tried it like that so will withhold comment until such time), but more I want to look at what is not in the product – in this case practically everything required to make a half decent bowl of chilli.

I decided to investigate further and picked up a tin of Low Fat Coconut Milk. Coconut milk is one of my favourite things to cook with; an essential ingredient in Thai curries, which coincidently are an essential ingredient to my weekly happiness. But I’ve never used low fat before – primarily because my thought process is that if I am going to eat something that’s got a lot of fat in it it’s probably there for good reason – taste (similarly non-alcoholic lager ranks for me as one of the worlds most pointless inventions).

But in the interest of research I read the label. Contains coconut milk and water. So that’s the secret! Basically low-fat coconut milk contains 50% less fat because it contains 50% less coconut milk! They might have well have just put it into a smaller time half the size for half the price and let us add our own water! But the shocker is the tin with half the amount of the product you want to buy actually costs more than the full tin! So here’s a tip – by full fat, add your own water and make double the amount of curry.

Nearby was a jar of passata – sieved tomatoes, ingredients: tomatoes. Now I know not everyone is a keen cook and prefer convenience but generally speaking anyone taking time out to follow a recipe that calls for passata isn’t going to be too adverse to sieving their own tomatoes, or if feeling a little lazy just blitzing them in a magimix. So I wonder if consumers perhaps think passata is something more. It is not, the only difference as far as I can tell is cost: passata 89 pence, tin of tomatoes, 35 pence.

So the moral is indeed Read the Label. You might just save yourself a few quid.